Ray Richardson paints everyday life scenes based on his own experience: his native area of South-East London, travel memories or personal concerns expressed through his emblematic double, an English Bull Terrier. He shapes this material by combining “the traditional stuff of painting with the cinematic ways of looking at things” (close-up, elongated horizontal formats, use of light and perspective) that has earned him the nickname of “Martin Scorsese of figurative painting”.

His sophisticated framings refer both to pictorial tradition (William Hogarth, Edward Hopper, British landscapes paintings, abstract expressionism) and to contemporary popular cultures (American street photography, film noir, James Ellroy novels, mods subculture, Soul music, football). Mixing humor, drama and irony, Ray Richardson’s narrative painting depicts a whole social and peripheral panorama, the one of working and middle-class.

Graduated from Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths, he has been the recipient of several prizes, such as the BP Portrait Award and the British Council Award many times. His work is part of many public and private collections: Victoria and Albert Museum, Fondation Carmignac, The National Portrait Gallery, Ingram Collection, Ruth Borchard Collection….

Writing in the catalogue for this dynasty of pithy portraits, Jack Auerbach suggests Ray Richardson - a purveyor of a “proud and pugnacious” London with “big skies and secret deals” – could claim membership of an esteemed lineage.

Richardson's concern is not, like Howson, the grandiose, Hogarthian set-piece allegory - but an Impressionist-like storybook narrative redolent of the cinema of David Lynch and at times, Jean-Luc Godard.